Presentation Date

29 May 2013

Once Upon a Statistic: How to Tell a Compelling Story When All You Have are Facts

Joe Staples

Overview

Marketing communications (marcomm) writers must be good storytellers. At least, that’s one of the messages you take home if you read much about the marcomm craft. (Take a short Google detour to see for yourself—read the first sentence of the top search results.)

The idea that marcomm should tell a story is a good one in theory, but the mandate offers little practical help. In addition, the word story is tossed around so freely as to sound like a buzzword. In your day-to-day experience, you have probably heard clients use the word as a synonym for message, flow, argument, tag line, main point, and more.

It’s one thing to tell a great story at the corporate level if you have a huge budget, a creative team, and many media in which to work. But what does it mean to tell a story when you’re just writing a product marketing slick or a data sheet and all you have are facts, such as “speeds and feeds”?

This webinar will examine the tell-a-story directive and explore ways to apply elements of story to our work as marcomm writers.